Friends-and-family beta

Welcome to the beta, and thanks.

You are getting early access to Ignia. This is not a public beta. The list is small on purpose, the goal is real conversations, not a metrics dashboard. Read this once, keep it open the first time you sit down with the app, and write to me directly when something feels off.

What Ignia is.

You describe what you want to learn, in your own words, with as much context as you want to give. Ignia builds a plan, writes the lessons, generates exercises matched to your level, and keeps track of what you actually know. The next session adjusts around the gaps the exercises reveal.

Three things make it different from the apps you have probably tried.

• It teaches the topic you bring, not a fixed catalogue. Spanish for a trip in three weeks, the math behind your job, your guitar technique, the French Revolution: same engine.
• It tracks retention, not lesson count. Knowledge fades. The app schedules review when it predicts you are about to forget. No streaks, no daily badges, no "mastered in 30 days."
• You can argue with it. If an exercise grades you wrong, you can challenge the score. The model is a collaborator, not an authority.

How to sign in.

1. 1. Install the app from the link I sent you.
2. 2. Open the app and go to Settings, then Account.
3. 3. Enter the email address I sent your invitation to, then click Send sign-in link.
4. 4. Check your inbox for the link and click it. The app will open and finish signing you in, usually within a few seconds.
5. 5. Once you are signed in, I will grant you a free Course Pack (100 credits) from my side. You do not need to do anything else. It will show up under Settings, then My Packs within a day.

If the link does not arrive in a few minutes, check spam, then message me. There is no beta-specific surface in the app. Sign-in works exactly like it will for everyone else. If anything else goes wrong, message me directly. This phase is meant to be informal.

About the credit system.

The reason this beta exists at all is the credit system. Here is the honest version.

The cloud version of Ignia uses Anthropic's models to grade your open-ended answers and to generate lessons. Those calls cost real money. Credits are how we keep that cost visible without making the app pay-per-use.

A short answer typically costs 1 credit. A longer essay might cost 2 or 3, because longer answers cost us more in API tokens. The exact cost shows up next to the Submit button before you confirm. No surprises.

What I want to learn from this beta. Whether the credit display changes how you write. If you find yourself trimming an answer to save a credit, that is a problem we want to know about. The exercise is the writing, not the credit count. Tell me if you notice that reflex.

If you run out of credits, nothing breaks. You can still do every deterministic exercise (multiple choice, fill the blank, ordering, matching, equation solving, code tracing, and a few more). Only open-ended writing and code-review exercises need credits.

What we collect. What we do not.

For this beta only, the app sends anonymous usage events when you interact with the cloud model. These help us derive credit pricing from real data instead of guesses. The telemetry switch lives in Settings, then Privacy. You can turn it off at any time and nothing in the app breaks.

At the end of the beta, the individual events tied to your account are deleted from our analytics database. Only the aggregated numbers we used to derive credit pricing survive. If you want the full data-handling notes, ask me and I will share them directly.

How to send feedback.

Write to me. Email, message, in person at family dinner. Whatever is easiest. There is no forum, no Discord, no support ticket system at this stage. If something breaks, if a lesson reads strangely, if a grade feels unfair, if the credit display nudges you in a direction you did not expect, I want to hear it.

The most useful feedback is specific.

• "On the third Spanish lesson, the exercise on past-tense verbs asked me to translate a sentence with a structure we had not seen yet."
• "I noticed I was rewriting my essay shorter before submitting because I saw the credit cost go up. That felt off."
• "I tried to challenge a grade and did not find where to click."

Vague is also fine ("the third lesson dragged"). Just say it.

When the beta ends.

The beta runs for roughly four weeks from when you sign in. After that:

• Your free Course Pack stays on your account until its window closes naturally. You do not lose any progress.
• The analytics events you sent during the beta are deleted. Aggregated numbers (median cost per action and similar) stay.
• The public version of Ignia will use credit prices derived from this beta. Yours and a small number of others'. The numbers will not carry your name, but they will carry your fingerprints, and that is the point.
• Your local app data (lessons, exercises, plans, mastery) lives on your machine and stays there regardless. Nothing gets uploaded or deleted on our end.

If you want to keep using Ignia after the beta, you can either pick up another Course Pack at the public price or plug in your own API key for free. Friends-and-family gets nothing automatic, but if you want a discount code later, ask.

A note on the goal.

The reason for this round is to make a calmer, more honest learning app. Not "10 minutes a day or you lose your streak." Not "you have mastered Module 3, share the badge." Just a tool that helps you get better at what you said you wanted to get better at, and that is honest about how memory works.

Tell me what does not work. That is the whole reason you are here.